The Knitting Wars

Earlier this month I began the long process which was learning how to knit. The day before Goldie and Frank (elders at Riverside) began to teach me, my thunder was stolen by Shoshana Okano. She not only one upped me learning how to knit merely hours before I learnt, but she also got training on how to pearl. This news was devastating to me because I am not use to having to settle for second place. Therefore we found ourselves on opposing sides of the battlefield and the knitting wars had begun.

It has been more than a month and I can clearly state that in this competition I was crushed beyond belief. I don't often declare when I lose but I was so pathetic against her naturally gifted knitting hands. Whereas her stitches were nice, loose but perfectly balanced, mine were freakishly tight and I kept missing stitches left right and center. I had barely created a small square in pink yarn and she was already knitting a hat. In my defense her billet mom was a crazy knitter and at the Nechako Manor she was able to get amazing tips from the "In north China we do....." nurse who turned out to be a pro knitter. The playing field was stacked against me from the start and the better she got the lazier I became. Nevertheless I have an appointment tomorrow with Catherine (another Riverside resident) and I am going to give pearling another try. I am really looking forward to that but my true secret weapon is that Frank has promised me (if I get better) that he would teach me how to make these amazingly ugly but awesome slippers. So until then Shoshana you are the goddess of knitting but ugly slippers can change the perspective of everything.

Merry (Belated) Christmas

I have fallen of the band wagon when it came to updating my blog but I am back to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. I promise to stay more in sync with my blog and its posts because I have lots to write about but unfortunately from time to time I become slightly lazy. I will update again soon!

The Records of History

The Residents of Riverside have yet to stop impressing me. I love going there in the mornings because everything is so low key. I go there to talk, spend time and to just brighten the day of anyone who so asks. Not only are they usually friendly they also have some of the most interesting stories and things to share. On Thursday I spent some time with this gentleman named Bob. He is in the process of digging out all of his old records and restoring them to their previous state. He began telling me about his first record player when he was a kid a 75 rpm (or something) record player and how the first records held only one or two songs and used only the one side. He pointed to an unopened box and said that they were records that had belonged to his mother. We spent the next half hour going through them and cleaning them up with these cool brushes.
I loved reading the labels, learning about artists I had never heard of and just finding out when and where they came from. One of the last records that I pulled out was a Christmas record. I could not believe my eyes when I read that it was released on December 3rd 1909. It was exactly 100 years to the day (well it was December 4th but close enough) that this record had been released amid Christmas cheer in New York City. How it made it into the hands of Bob’s mother he did not know but it really made me think of how our technology has changed in 100 short years. The change is incredible and I felt like I was holding a piece of history. We take for granted all of the things we have and we forget that not very long ago something as simple as a record was treasured beyond belief. For me this made me realize how quickly our lives change and that in no time at all our present will be history.

A Runaway Puppy!

One of the more memorable moments that happened this week was that I found a four or five month old puppy that had broken into Riverside. It all started at about 9 am when Patrick, one of the residents, interrupted a meeting which Helen, my boss, and I were having. He had sworn that he had just seen a rat with a pink sweater run down the hallways. Helen thanked him for his input but soon forgot about his declaration when he left. Helen had a lot of administration work to do so I got to lead the morning walking group with Isabel and Hilda, two of the nicest residents in the facility. We were coming the the end of our second hallway when this so called rat came running down the hallway on a collision course with Hilda.
After some quick thinking, on my part, I was able to divert the small creature away from Hilda and attempt to catch it. It was then that I saw it was a puppy. It skirted past me and ran into the kitchen. I finally cornered her and picked her up. She was so petrified that she began to pee everywhere. Here I was with this puppy, holding her as far away as possible, as she peed and made a mess. I put her in one of our back rooms and got her some water. We were at a loss of what to do because it certainly was not a dog of one of the tenants and she had no collar.
I felt terrible for the poor creature. She was so scared and I did not want to call SPCA because a dog pound is not a place to be if you are a puppy. Thankfully at about 1 pm a woman came to Riverside looking for a dog in a pink sweater. Supposedly Isabel had taken a scooter ride downtown and saw this lady frantically looking for her puppy. When I brought the dog out to her, she burst into tears of gratitude. The dogs name was Teeka and what had happened was that she had just gotten a new collar, but the collar was still a bit big for Teeka so when she was tied up outside she slipped out of it and went for a stroll. Seeing the dog reunited with her owner made my week. The bond between dog and owner is incredible and it brought a whole new meaning to ‘man’s best friend’.

Teeka is a cross between a pug and boxer.